That "Sink"ing Feeling

And the sink is in!  We can brush our teeth in the main upstairs bathroom again without spitting in the toilet or tub.  Too much information?  Probably.  I think the tile and grout went in very smoothly, although you would have to ask Matt for the true story there.  I didn't hear any grumpy mumblings coming from the bathroom as he was working, so I consider that a success.  I'll let the photos tell the story:

How did people do DIY home improvement projects before YouTube?  It was the go-to source.  The trick was to watch enough different videos until several of them said the same thing, then follow those directions.  Really, what could go wrong with that method?

It really did go fairly smoothly, especially since he felt like he had such trouble with the backsplash project in the downstairs bathroom.  There are several tubs of premixed grout in shades of white and tan, but we wanted something light gray, which meant buying the colored powder and adding water to make grout.  We ended up really liking the color, and hopefully the slight shade of gray will hide some of the toothpaste mess that's bound to grind into the grout.  We can always hope.

And the final piece - the sink!  Hooray!  We bought the faucet about a year ago on clearance, knowing we were going to redo a bathroom eventually, but we never took it out of the box.  When it was removed, we found that it was basically colored plastic.  Oops.  Way too late to return it at this point.  No wonder it was so cheap!  You would think we would know better by now.  It's working great for now, and the faucets turn smoothly, so hopefully if we're careful we'll get a few years of use out of it.  It's been really nice to have a bathroom with an actual working toilet, tub/shower, and sink all at once.  Not that they're all in use at once, but you get the idea.

The biggest mistake we've made so far is the mirror.  We didn't like the layout of the vanity lights and mirror before so we thought we would go all trendy and get fancy lights and a framed mirror.  There was a reason the former owners did what they did.  The bathroom has a strange slanted ceiling because it is under an eave.  That slant starts right over the bathroom light fixture.  The mirror we bought is in a cute frame, but that takes about 4 inches off the total height of the reflective part of the mirror, meaning Matt cannot see the top of his head at all in it.  Even I have to duck a little to see my whole head.  Not good.  Squatting while you shave or do your hair might be great for your quads, but it gets old really fast.  Plan B is to buy a plain old unframed mirror at a large home improvement store and hang it as high as we can go, directly under the vanity light fixture, and then hope someday when we sell this house the new owner is no taller than 5'10".  Ah, the quirks of an old house.